If you are using IPython notebook on a Linux distribution which uses systemd as it’s process manager (such as Fedora Linux, Arch Linux) , you may find this post useful. I will describe a fairly basic configuration to manage (start/stop/restart) IPython notebook server using systemd.

Creating the Systemd unit file

First, we will create the systemd unit file. As root user, create a new file /usr/lib/systemd/system/ipython-notebook.service and copy the following contents into it:
[Unit]
Description=IPython notebook

Note that due to the naming of our unit file, the service will run as ipython-notebook. To completely understand the above unit file, you will need to read up a little of the topic. You may find my earlier post useful which also has links to systemd resources. Three things deserve explanation though:

The line, ExecStart=/usr/bin/ipython notebook --no-browser --pylab=inline specifies the command to start the IPython notebook server. This should be familiar to someone who uses it.

The lines, User=ipynb and Group=ipynb specify that we are going to run this process as user/group ipynb (we create them in the next step).

The line WorkingDirectory=/home/ipynb/notebooks specify that the notebooks will be stored/server in/from /home/ipynb/notebooks

For me, the biggest reason to do this is that I do not have to start the IPython notebook server everytime on system startup manually, since I know it will be running when I need to use it. I plan to explore managing custom profiles next and also think more about a few other things.